AMS

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, AMS is a technique for radiocarbon dating of samples that can be as small as a single cereal grain or less than 1 mg; i.e. far tinier than those needed for standard radiocarbon dating.[1] It counts the atoms themselves, and can detect one 14C in more than 1016 atoms.[2] AMS can be conveniently used for dating of precious paleontological or archeological material.

AMS technique has been used to refute arguments that H. sapiens had appeared in the New World earlier than 50 000 or 100 000 years ago. It turned out that the seemingly very old skeletons have only a few thousand years.

The radiocarbon method was also used in paleoprimatology for dating extinct species of lemur in Madagascar. It has shown up that their age is only in the range of 1000–3000 years. Thus, they became extinct only recently - probably during the time of the colonization of Madagascar by humans.[1]